Final Call for Tonight-Friday

Current Radar from Intellicast

Final Call:

Looks like we have a decent late season winter storm shaping up for much of western and central North Carolina and parts of southern Virginia.  This will bring a mix snow, sleet, freezing rain, and rain to many of these areas.  I've been asked about why my forecast is lower than some others and wanted to explain some of the reasoning behind it.

 1) Dry air from high pressure to our north is not really going to budge.  This will keep drier air in place and shunt the low eastward.  This will prevent steadier,heavier precipitation from getting too far north.  For areas west of the Blue Ridge mountains, east, down-sloping winds will dry things further.  

2) Since best moisture stays south and east of the Virginia higher elevations, many of these areas will have marginal saturation in the snow growth region of the atmosphere.  Without deep saturation, snow crystal growth becomes limited.

 3) 850 temperatures will be marginal throughout.  This could be overcome under heavier precipitation, but I think most of that is confined to the NC mountains. 

The main thing to watch this evening will be water-vapor and radar imagery to find out exactly where the northwestern extent of precipitation sets up.  I'll have an update this evening.